Steve Ballmer's annual letter to shareholders makes it very clear Microsoft is at a point of no return - and in the middle of a transition into a hardware company. "This is a significant shift, both in what we do and how we see ourselves - as a devices and services company. It impacts how we run the company, how we develop new experiences, and how we take products to market for both consumers and businesses." Line. Sand.

So... that first sidewinder-gamepad seems to follow the general layout of Saturn and later Genesis controllers. Hence it shares their flaw of six-button-overload of right thumb, can't possibly be "by far the best gamepad at the time" - that would be PS1 controller: nice grip and four thumb buttons, plus additional trigger buttons for four in total.
(no, but seriously, the overall form of Playstation controller hardly changed for almost two decades now - and successive revisions of Nintendo and MS gamepads got closer to it over time...)